News feminist philosophers can use

University of Texas tells women what to wear June 4, 2014

A reader spotted this sign up at the University of Texas School of Nursing in Austin.

Our reader said the signs popped up this week. “Revealing clothing MUST NOT be worn while in the School of Nursing Building. It distracts from the learning environment.”

“It distracts from the learning environment.” Oh, OK. For a second there I thought we were only teaching young girls in elementary, middle and highschool that their bodies are nothing but shameful sin receptacles which must be covered up and hidden at all times from men who absolutely cannot control themselves at the slightest hint of a woman’s skin. Good to see that this outdated sexist bullshit is being instilled in college students in a professional training program, too!

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10 Responses to “University of Texas tells women what to wear”

Who’s being distracted? The students, the professors, the administrators, the physical plant staff, all of the above?

Who is saying on behalf of all those people who is being distracted? I mean, not counting the School of Nursing imposing these rules on free peoples, but who is reporting to the School of Nursing that they are themselves or speaking on behalf of all those people making it public they are incapable of concentrating or educating or learning because they are sexually aroused?

If there is a policy being made through the school’s conduct code, was this change made through bureaucratic oversight or through emendation of the conduct code? Is there a paper trail to follow to inform us who the people are who publicly state they are sexually aroused such that they are incapable of owning their responsibility to concentrate, educate, learn, or perform the functions needed to keep the campus working?

If this isn’t a policy change in the conduct code, then who ordered the printing and styling of the signs? Signs cost money, and budgets, they say to us, are tight. So someone’s name is on a form authorizing the purchase of these signs stating people are so distracted by physical bodies not being covered up that the community has to police their own bodies’ dress before entering the building. That person is likely a good contact to figure out where these complaints originated, among which populations of the shareholders of the community, and how often these complaints are reported.

Otherwise, if these signs just originated from the interstices of the bureaucratic machine, then someone’s spending money that the university will not be able to justify before the legislature, giving more opportunities for those legislators to further squeeze out the funding to the entire university system, and in this way, they can even do so under the guise of being politically sensible, compassionate to women’s concerns, proactively avoiding wasteful spending, streamlining bureaucracies to make them more responsible to the taxpayer, the usual sensitivity to concerns they can pick and choose from both conservatives and progressives alike to appease whomever it is advantageous to please.

To start, I never made a call to, e.g., allow women to wear bikinis in an educational context. Disallowing women to wear the above listed items of clothing would place greater limitations on their comfortable wardrobe options as the weather in Texas approaches temperatures in the triple digits over the summer than disallowing men to wear speedos would. The historical context of policing women’s bodies, choice of clothing, and placing responsibility on a particular gender for distracting another with their appearance is quite different, etc., etc.